How do you feel about america's early westward expansion and war with the natives?

It sucks. That being said, similar things have happened all through history, continuing to today, and perpetrated by all different races and cultures. It’s an ingrained human trait to try and always get more. To focus on only one example of this behavior is irrelevant.

It means I’m here. Otherwise I’m not too keen on it.

It was reckless disregard for the rights of the earlier colonists. (American Indians migrated to the U.S. via the Asian land bridge.)

I think America’s westward expansion was inevitable but how they did it might not have been the most humane way to go about it. I’ve done my fair share of reading about the Native Americans and their interactions with ‘the white man’ (for lack of a better term) and I’m pretty comfortable in saying that Native Americans were treated very badly and persecuted heavily all those years ago. The books Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee and In the Spirit of Crazy Horse are just two searing examples of many tragic and sad events that transpired during those difficult years.

It’s also pretty tragic and sad what those tribes of Natives would do to each other in times of tribal wars.

One word.

Genocide

Genocide is what happened to the Armenians and the Jews. What happened to the Natives is not on that level.

It was bad. Trust me.

I disagree. It was an intentional act to eliminate them. If the world was flat we would have pushed every one off.

Do you really think thanksgiving went down as we are told it did?
From the time the “white man” came here. We wanted them off the land we claimed as our own.

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.

@ChazMaz that’s your prerogative.

That’s fine, in my eyes thats a misuse of the word.

I’m not in the position of judging vast sweeps of history as “good” or “bad”. If you want to point to specific injustices and “bad acts”, then that’s different. I abhor some of the things done “for us” by the US Army at the time, including Wounded Knee and other massacres that were partly or wholly fictionalized as “battles”. I think our government acted shamefully in its abrogation of the various treaties that the Natives signed in good faith.

And forget about “post-Civil War”, the things we did before the Civil War (the Trail of Tears, for example) were bad enough all by themselves.

On the other hand, I don’t think that individual settlers migrating across the Great Plains (and at times stopping and settling) and the completion and use of the Transcontinental Railroad were “bad acts”, in and of themselves.

For that matter, the reason that the Pilgrims were able to land at Plymouth and walk into that area as easily as they did was primarily because the Native tribes in the area had been decimated by smallpox in the year or two preceding the landing. (The Pilgrims weren’t the first white people to land on those shores; fishermen and shipwrecked sailors had been landing there for some time beforehand, and inadvertently spreading the disease. Again, if you point to the practice that was supposedly used later on, of trading smallpox-infected blankets to the Natives, then that is a despicable act.)

Edit: I didn’t want to forget the continuing abuse of Native Americans’ trust fund monies by the Department of the Interior, whose failed accounting for oil lease revenues and other funds has been well documented since the 80s… and not yet rectified, as far as I know.

It’s certainly unfortunate and not at all in line with what we as Americans proclaim to be our values. That said, it’s not particularly unique in either American or human history: claiming that you have a God-given right for someone else’s property and land.

I agree with @Bluefreedom, but add that, as @syzygy2600 says, humanity has a long, long history of doing precisely the same thing to other groups of humans over and over again, as well as to animals for which they conceived no useful purpose.

If you go back to the very earliest European presence in the New World, inadvertent genocide becomes the term to use, in that so many millions of Native Americans died from diseases brought by Europeans, simply because they lacked herd immunity to them, as well as from diseases already extant in the Americas.

We don’t know precisely how many people lived on the American continents at the time Columbus arrived. Current estimates range from 8 million to as many as 112 million. Some historians estimate that up to 80% of some Native populations died due to European diseases after first contact. Certainly specific populations show losses of anywhere from 30% to 90% (In 1618–1619, smallpox wiped out 90% of the Massachusetts Bay Native Americans.) to 100% (The Caribs and the Arawaks).

As to whether it was actual genocide, I would have to say it was not typically, because genocide implies intent, and the deaths of so many of the indigenous peoples in the Americas were incidental to disease and simple incompatibility to European ways of living.

Certainly, the original Europeans came hoping to convert the Americans and thus add people to the realms they represented. There were specific instances of genocide, such as massacres and deliberate and forced displacement of populations, but overall, most Europeans had originally hoped to convince these previously unknown people to join their civilization.

Seems as if it always has been, not only with humans but with animals as well, that the strongest (or the one with the most guns and money) wins. Before the Europeans landed in Australia the Aborigines killed each other in tribal wars and land disputes. They just didn’t have the weaponry to do it as efficiently as the Europeans. Same is true in America.

I don’t want to be held hostage by guilt from that. I can only lead my life and try to elect officials to do the right thing from here on.

In the meantime I don’t want to go back to wherever my ancestors came from so decrying the actions of those who came before me while enjoying the spoils of their battles seems a bit hypocritical.

@rooeytoo I agree with you.
I’m not sure that I know who some of you mean when you say “we”.
I personally wasn’t alive when the westward expansion took place.
My ancestors came over around 1900, so I suppose most of them were not involved in it either.
I’m not saying that terrible things did not happen to the native Americans, or to the settlers as well. But I don’t feel at all responsible for it, no matter how bad I may feel that some things happened the way they did.
Was the colonization good or bad?
I think in many ways it was good, I wish that some things had been done differently.

How do I feel, or what do I think? I feel it was a crime against humanity, like all genocides. I think it was inevitable, like all expansion.

It was genocide, and it was wrong.

I myself am a large percentage Native American, and yes, it does anger me when I think about it – but, luckily, I don’t think about it often. To me it’s kind of like black people and white people – yes, what white people did to african americans was horrible and inexcusable, but no one in the younger generations owned slaves, so there’s no point in going around being angry towards them about it (unless, of course, they continue to treat african americans unfairly).

However, when I was in rehab I shared a group with people who were hospitalized for depression or suicide attempts or whatever other psychological problems they were dealing with. One of the guys who was there for depression was a full-blood native american, straight off the reservation. He was VERY disturbed by what happened when white man came slaughter our people. Of course, he probably had psychological problems that assisted him in obsessing with this bit of history, but of course, it isn’t something anyone can just say “Shut up and forget about it”.

I guess it’s just one of those things that we have to forgive (only because white people of today aren’t the ones who did it), but not forget.

I have ancestors on both sides of the story, but I am a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, and we got a very poor deal from the Eurpoean Invaders. There were 2 to 3 million Choctaw living in the Mississippi River Valley before the invasion, and within 100 years, the numbers dropped to a few 10’s of thousands.

They were well established in farming villages and welcomed the newcomers as neighbors. They entered into agreement after agreement (treaty) with the new US Government, but each agreement was breached, and a new, more restrictive replaced it, until finally most of the population was ordered to move to a new land, and forced to walk from their former home. 15,000 left their ancient homeland and 7,000 died as they walked over 550 miles.

the world is small. It was destined to happen. Events like that happen with the more technically advanced culture overtaking and absorbing the lesser. Also, was it America? or more like the rest of the world coming to the new world then going west?

@woodcutter The difference is, you can overtake a society without slaughtering them.

@stemnyjones Agreed but I just don’t believe the people from the old world just thought that killing off the natives was an easier way to overtake them. There was a great deal of extremely brutal pushback that helped alot in getting the moniker “savages” heaped onto the Indians, no? So it escalated into a war with many lost on both sides. Due to the mindset of each side, there was no other way this absorption was going to happen. I can see it from both sides but this expansion was destined to happen. The Indians were secure for millennia in North America until the invention of boats that could cross the oceans from abroad. After that happened it was all over.

In retrospect it was wrong. But many millennia earlier the late settlers coming from Asia did the same to the earlier settlers. The concept of universal human rights is a more recent invention.

@woodcutter Are you getting your information from a reliable source, or is just that you “just don’t believe” that people from the old world would kill off the natives?

@mattbrowne Where did you get that idea? I have never heard that the ancient settlers displaced any earlier original inhabitants.

@YARNLADY – There are no original inhabitants. Both American continents were void of any homo species. The settlers came from Asia. From what I understand they came in waves. New encounters were not always peaceful. There’s also the

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clovis_culture#Solutrean_hypothesis

but it’s very controversial, so I wasn’t referring to it. More research is needed.

@mattbrowne There are several other anthropoligists claiming evidence of pre-clovis cultures, and such, but there is no evidence that a later migration displaced an earlier people. The only modern information about that comes from the pre-columbian land disputes between the Hopi and the Navaho, for instance, and the various tribal wars between various South American groups. All of those conflicts were in the past few hundreds of years. I have seen no evidence or speculation of ancient conflicts such as you have proposed.

@YARNLADY – I know that you are far more knowledgeable on this subject than I am. For me it’s hard to imagine that there was just peaceful coexistence between 20,000 BC and 10,000 BC even if there’s isn’t any evidence for this.

@stemnyjones Its territorial. At first the newcomers were were a curiosity and were approached with trepidation. It didn’t start off with any kind of genocide. There is always a spark that sets things like that off. On the whole I just don’t believe those first settlers decided before leaving their boats that there was going to be a giant housecleaning of the native inhabitants. It just turned out that way. You might be thinking of Cortez. When I went to school we learned history, actually made us sit in a classroom for about an hour a day and learn. Then again it was public school (New England) but I think they got it right back then even in the ‘60’s. Not sure what they do about history in school nowadays but I bet it isn’t as good :/

@woodcutter Well, since you are going off of your opinion versus hard facts, lets just agree to disagree. :)

Wow I can’t believe I missed this one! my computer at home is on the fritz, pouting

I don’t understand what there is to defend about colonization as a matter of fact. The fact that it occurred simultaneously with genocide and environmental degradation when it absolutely did not have to answers the question in my eyes. Native people welcomed the colonizers and did much to help them, there was no need for the brutality that followed. It is disgusting to think about as a matter of fact.

Now to get to what other users have said. The land bridge theory is far from sceintific fact. Even if it were considered more true than not (which is not necessarily the case) does not mean that the “natives” colonized some other group of people. In fact I think you will find there is little to no evidence to support that idea.
Not only that but the way in which Native people interacted was quite different in terms of how violence exists today. That is in regards to @mattbrowne ‘s statements.

In regards to @Darwin and @syzygy2600 in terms of it not being genocide well that is completely false. The genocide that occurred towards Native people was absolutely deliberate and there is quite a bit of evidence to back this fact up. The numbers killed suggested genocide as well as the methods use to kill and the diaries of colonizers back this up. And it’s not just diaries, numbers, and methods. There were laws put in place that supported these acts, is that not systematic? And let us not forget the fact that people were paid money to turn in Native scalps. How is that not intentional?? A large sum for male scalps, a bit smaller for women, and just a tad for children (yes they paid for child scalps). Not only that but there is absolutely no denying the fact that a cultural genocide occurred. So besides the pure brutal killing (not to mention brutal violence, rape, and kidnapping among other things) there was a systematic wiping of Native culture that occurred.

For the asker I will be upfront and say I am a Native woman.

@RedPowerLady – The original death of millions of Native Americans was not genocide. The Spaniards came to the New World to seek treasure, yes, but the Church included priests because the primary source of riches they sought was souls to join in and support the Church. The fact that they had no idea that they were bringing deadly diseases with them means they did not “plan” to kill so many people. Nor did they plan to arrive during a time of epidemic nor during times of government instability. Hence that was not genocide.

Skip several hundred years into the future, to the settlement of North America by other Europeans and you get a different scenario, one that did indeed lead to individual instances of genocide. The British, Dutch, German, and French colonists who fled Europe for the New World had no desire to convert anyone. They just wanted a place where they could live the way they wanted. Since Native peoples were in the way, then acts of genocide were committed by some.

However, there are also instances of Native peoples attempting to destroy other Native peoples. The Inca were not good neighbors – you joined their empire or they fought you tooth and nail. The Maya were decent folks, but the Aztecs were like the Inca, grabbing up land and people as fast as they could. And talk to the Tohono O’odham, the Zuni and the Hopi about their feelings about the Navaho (which is why I had to be very careful when assigning seats when I taught in Arizona. No members of the first three would ever sit with a Navaho.)

And then there were the Comanche, who killed everybody who crossed their path. Once the Comanche got horses, a lot of people found themselves crossing paths with them.

And don’t forget, there was kidnapping and raping right back. If my family has native blood it is because several of my female ancestors were taken by Native warriors, and some were returned pregnant with children who were raised as part of the family. While “stealing” wives was a part of some tribal cultures, my ancestors did not understand it that way.

We can fight this battle (actually a long, long series of battles) all over again, or we can all say the past is the past, we are not our ancestors, and we will together strive for peace and prosperity for everyone.

@Darwin I second the last statement we are not our ancestors, and we will together strive for peace and prosperity for everyone.

@Darwin

This first part is a long winded way of saying I don’t know what you are trying to convince me of. Genocide happened. It may have not happened by germ warfare, which I never argued it did, but it did happen during colonization.

So, first off I am not arbitrarily defining the term colonization. No one put a timeline on this event within this posting. Genocide did happen during colonization as colonization is defined by history and not arbitrary by myself.

Secondly, I not once called arriving during an epidemic genocide. I called the acts of genocide, genocide. And I think you are differentiating quite too distinctly to be honest. Genocide happened. It may not have happened through disease but it happened at some point during colonization. So to deny that it was genocide altogether is a fallacy. This is all in response to this statement: “As to whether it was actual genocide, I would have to say it was not typically, because genocide implies intent, and the deaths of so many of the indigenous peoples in the Americas were incidental to disease and simple incompatibility to European ways of living” The latter part of the sentence would imply genocide. But so would this
“one that did indeed lead to individual instances of genocide” which is in fact contradictory to the first statement listed above to which I was replying in the first place.

In terms of Native people fighting with other Natives:
1. That is not an excuse for genocide
2. You are likely using an interpertation of history written by the colonizer
3. In actuality many Native “warfares” were miswritten and what actually took place was much less violent than we have come to believe
4. Just because tribes feud or don’t “like” each other does not mean anything in terms of violence. Not to mention many many of these tribal disagreements came as a result of colonization.
5. This statement is completely ridiculous “And then there were the Comanche, who killed everybody who crossed their path. Once the Comanche got horses, a lot of people found themselves crossing paths with them.” It is horribly stereotypical.

In regards to this statement:
“And don’t forget there was kidnapping and raping right back”
Let’s just not even go there. What does this have to do with anything? If this were the case then it happened in much smaller numbers and as a result of colonization. Not that it makes it right and that is why I don’t want to spend any effort on discussing it. Because even if it were a result of colonization it still would not be okay so there is no reason to go any further here.

We can fight this battle (actually a long, long series of battles) all over again, or we can all say the past is the past, we are not our ancestors, and we will together strive for peace and prosperity for everyone

I have no idea where this is coming from. My response was to the user. It is my right to point out errors and to give my opinion on the topic. I didn’t say that we should continue fighting over it. I never have. But to somehow imply that I am not being peaceful by pointing out that genocide did, in fact, happen is saying that my opinion, as a Native woman, about my own history is somehow less valid than yours. Because you can reply to said topic with your opinion and I cannot? This simply makes no sense to me whatsoever. Like I said, I have no idea where this is coming from. The best I can guess is that I said it was disgusting to think about. Which when we think of any genocide, that done to Native people or non-Natives alike is disgusting, and rightly should be.

@RedPowerLady – You say ‘I have no idea where this is coming from. My response was to the user. ”

But then you said previously: “In regards to @Darwin and @syzygy2600 in terms of it not being genocide well that is completely false.”

That is where my response is coming from. If you go back to read my original post you will see that I do not deny examples of genocide.

However, the biggest loss of life in the Native populations was within a few decades of original contact and was the result of inadvertent introduction of disease on top of contemporary epidemics and pre-existing wars.

@Darwin Just to be clear, my response was to the statement I quoted above: “As to whether it was actual genocide, I would have to say it was not typically, because genocide implies intent, and the deaths of so many of the indigenous peoples in the Americas were incidental to disease and simple incompatibility to European ways of living”

In addition to that I would argue, or have argued that mass genocide occurred. It occurred on a systematic level to wipe out Native people as a whole and not simply specific instances of genocide deemed massacres.

Anyhow what I don’t understand is your response. What I said is that it is false to say that genocide did not happen. I do not see how tjat warrants the response above. Perhaps my response just triggered something deeper you wanted to say on the topic, I do not know. It seems as if you are saying little genocides, actually massacres happened, but we shouldn’t consider that real genocide becasue of this and this and this.

Anyhow to respond to what you have said, the idea that the biggest losses of life were a result of pre-existing wars is absolutely not true. Native people sustained their populations for years prior to colonization. What makes one think that just because settlers came all of the sudden Natives committed their own genocide against each other? That isn’t even logical.

In terms of numbers here is a good quote I found quickly on the internet as there is so much evidence in support of genocide against native people. The idea being that although Huge numbers were lost due to disease. Huge numbers, genocidal numbers, were lost due to deliberate policies enacted against Native people:
” In 1493, when Columbus returned to the Hispaniola, he quickly implemented policies of slavery and mass extermination of the Taino population of the Caribbean. Within three years, five million were dead. Las Casas, the primary historian of the Columbian era, writes of many accounts of the horrors that the Spanish colonists inflicted upon the indigenous population: hanging them en mass, hacking their children into pieces to be used as dog feed, and other horrid cruelties. The works of Las Casas are often omitted from popular American history books and courses because Columbus is considered a hero by many, even today.

Mass killing did not cease, however, after Columbus departed. Expansion of the European colonies led to similar genocides. “Indian Removal” policy was put into action to clear the land for white settlers. Methods for the removal included slaughter of villages by the military and also biological warfare. High death rates resulted from forced marches to relocate the Indians..”

sorry if I don’t respond tonight, i’ve got to go pick up hubby from work and my computer is on the fritz at home

This just goes to show my addiction to the internet. After picking up hubby I went to library to type this response

I will admit one failing. I am too caught up in discussing the details here. I do believe they are important but I believe my point got lost.

Here it is.

I believe that we need to acknowledge the genocide that took place. Acknowledge the past, Heal in the Present, Overcome in the Future. That is the path I see.

As I see it now many believe that:
– We should just “forget it” and move on.

What I believe is that we should:
– Remember history (with failings) and move on. Only then can we achieve the Peace that was discussed previously.

@RedPowerLady What a dedicated jelly you are Very good points.

@YARNLADY Thank you, i have to laugh at myself for doing that. You know how I get about these topics, haha. Otherwise I would be thinking about it all night, lol.

@RedPowerLady – Can we agree on this view?

“While there is general agreement that America was first settled from Asia by people who migrated across Beringia, the pattern of migration, its timing, and the place of origin in Asia of the peoples who migrated to the Americas remains unclear. In recent years researchers have sought to use familiar tools to validate or reject established theories like Clovis first. As new discoveries come to light, past hypotheses are reevaluated and new theories constructed. The archeological evidence suggest that Paleo-Indians first “widespread” habitation of the Americas occurred during the end of the last glacial period, or more specifically what is known as the late glacial maximum, around 16,500 – 13,000 years ago.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Models_of_migration_to_the_New_World

The land bridge was most likely used. To me the best explanation is this:

There are no fossil of homo erectus, homo habilis, and homo neanderthalensis in the Americas. Homo sapiens developed in Africa, which means all Native Americans like Europeans are also of African descent. Migration is the only explanation. And the land bridge migration the most likely explanation.

Now I’m not an expert about the conflicts that might or might not have happened after the first waves of migration. I leave this discussion to @Darwin, @YARNLADY and you.

@stemnyjones Hmmmmm. wasn’t aware this was an argument, silly me. Yes if one group of people are going to assume control over the territory of another, unless those people already occupying said territory are just complete, turn the other cheekers, then there is going to be some killing. There will be resistance from the defenders. Unless they are peacefully tricked into just giving up a fight will naturally happen. It’s human nature. So when there is going to be an incursion into another’s land or land that the defenders believe is theirs, it is more than likely going to devolve into a battle, even if there is some wishful thinking the defender might capitulate early on or even allow the foreigners to occupy and share the land. To think that there is an alternative would be to completely ignore human nature, and history. A more recent invasion would be the Jews going into Palestine. Did the Palestinians just sit on their hands and allow themselves to be displaced? No they did not. They resisted and were dealt a dirty hand because the Jews had help from others who had superior weapons and unlimited resources. My dear, these obsevations I have shown you are not just MY opinion they are historical realities. The fact that you don’t like them much has no bearing on this. You can say you don’t agree all you want that’s your prerogative, but to blow me off like you did seemed unnecessary. Really when you take what the two of us have put forth it seems like to me anyway we pretty much agree on this but it’s looking like you want to have someone to disagree with just the same. After reading your profile there seems to be an element of baiting so that you might succeed in finding someone to grind an axe with. Do you have an axe to grind with whitey….still?

@woodcutter ..wtf are you talking about? You say that they didn’t invade with intentions of slaughtering any natives they would encounter. I disagree with that. I said, in a very civilized manner, “Lets agree to disagree”... and you turn it into a racist thing by saying that I’m grinding an axe with “whitey”?

Very mature.

I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of sympathizing with the more indigenous peoples. When you realize that, culture and technologies (like medicine, hey!) aside, there wasn’t much difference between the Indians and the pioneers; had circumstances been somewhat different, I’m sure that we would have seen Indian incursions, as well.

In a similar vein, the position of the Southern states circa the Civil War is horrendously distorted and oversimplified.

@Nullo—You are correct about that. I once participated for a short time on a Native American chat site, and most of the talk there was very racist and ‘if the tables were turned’ how ‘we’ would retaliate. It was very enlightening. I’ve read that a lot of ‘black pride’ groups are very similar to the KKK in that regard as well.

Satan still at work, creating havoc in the minds of people. In the end times we are to break down the walls of division and come together in unity, for tomorrow has been played out and it can not be changed from what has been done. But we can be wise and notice that history repeats itself continuously, and gear up our armor and stand against the enemy who is against all people, Satan. Let us not fight amongst ourselves but stand in the army in which God Almighty is preparing. And watch as changes are being made in the Name of Jesus/Yahshua.